In the Internet age, it is commonplace to find online reviews by both ordinary consumers and experts (e.g., Consumer Reports). Nonetheless, the majority of prior research tends to focus on the effects of either source of information but not both. In particular, we were interested to conduct the research in the context of services, and not goods. This is because services are typically associated with greater uncertainty and variability compared to goods, leading consumers to approach goods purchases differently from services purchases.

Furthermore, there are different categories of services; for example, experience services can be confidently evaluated after purchase or consumption (e.g., hotel, hair salon, and restaurant), while credence experiences are difficult to evaluation even after consumption—they have to be taken on faith (e.g., dental service, insurance agency, and language institute). In this sense, credence services tend to carry greater uncertainty and risks compared to experience services.

Against this backdrop, several interesting and relevant questions arise:

What are the differential effects of peer review and expert review on consumers’ service evaluations?

What is the psychological mechanism underlying these effects?

Do these effects vary by experience vs. credence service?

What is potentially a boundary condition for these effects?

Were there any specific external events that influenced your decision to pursue this research?

While word-of-mouth communication was traditionally confined to oral, face-to-face, and other means of direct communication, the rapid growth of the Internet and associated technologies has amplified the impact of peer reviews online. Thus, consumers today have easy access to a wide range of online reviews by both their peers and experts (e.g., rottentomatoes.com, zagat.com, and tripadvisor.com).

Nonetheless, there was limited research examining the differential effects of peer and expert reviews on consumers’ service evaluations. Thus, we feel that findings from our research are timely and contribute to a better understanding of an interesting social and business phenomenon.

In what ways is your research innovative, and how do you think it will impact the field?

Across three studies, we show that consumers evaluate experience services more favorably when exposed to peer review, while they evaluate credence services more favorably when exposed to expert review). In addition, we show that these interaction effects can be explained by consumers’ confidence in their service evaluations.

More importantly, we identify the moderating role of information convergence on these effects. Specifically, convergent positive reviews (e.g. multiple positive reviews from peers and/or experts) confirm the aforementioned effects. However, when consumers see mixed information (i.e., positive and negative reviews) from either similar (i.e., multiple peer reviews or multiple expert reviews) or different sources (i.e., combination of peer and expert reviews), negative expert review has stronger influence than negative peer review in lowering consumer confidence and their service evaluations. This is a key result that is new to the literature.

Overall, these findings make important contributions to the literature on information processing in the services domain, and also have significant practical implications on managing consumer expectations of third-party information.

[We’re pleased to welcome authors Jenna R. Pieper of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Charlie O. Trevor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ingo Weller of LMU Munich, and Dennis Duchon of University of Nebraska-Lincoln . They recently published an article in the Journal of Management entitled “Referral Hire Presence Implications for Referrer Turnover and Job Performance,” which is currently free to read for a limited time. Below, Dr. Pieper discusses the events and circumstance that inspired this research:]

This paper was motivated by a general curiosity about the critical role of referrers in referral hiring in organizational settings, and originated in a section of my doctoral dissertation. Referral hiring, or the practice of using recommendations of a current employee (referrer) to identify and hire a new employee (referral hire), often accounts for 30% to 50% of an organization’s filling of its job openings. To date, the attention of research and practice has focused primarily on the referral hires and their outcomes, leaving a glaring gap in our understanding of how referrers are impacted by the hiring of a friend or acquaintance. We were therefore interested in gaining insight into how the presence of a referral hire influences referrer performance and voluntary turnover.

Our findings, which are arguably the first to specifically examine how referral hiring impacts referrers, show that referrers are indeed impacted by the presence of their referral hire through a socially enriched workplace. In our study, employees with a referral hire present were 27% less likely to leave than employees without a referral hire present, and their performance improved by 5.1% when a referral hire was present. However, we found that job similarity (indicating heightened workplace exposure) between referrers and their referral hires, when compared to job dissimilarity, was associated with lower referrer job performance. Thus, it seems the costs, such as socialization and informal training, for referrers in similar jobs to their referral hires may offset the performance gains gleamed from the referral hire presence. Most important to our work is that we provide the only empirical evidence to date that referring enhances the social enrichment construct at the heart of referral hire discourse.

I think that future research on this topic should continue to consider the critical role of the referrer in referral hiring. My main advice for scholars would be to consider the interface between the various stakeholders in referral hiring, different referring pathways, the intricacies in how referring hiring unfolds over time, and the contingencies that affect its outcomes. A lot of fascinating contributions can still be made regarding referral hiring.

Finally, our work is important to practitioners. It demonstrates that the presence aspect is crucial. When coupled with the well-established benefits for the referral hire, referral hiring appears to be a value proposition for the firm because performance and retention gains emerge for both referrers and referral hires. Thus, our work would encourage continued practice of referral hiring. Practitioners can also take from our study that it is important to be aware of and work to prevent potential downsides associated with referral hiring.

What motivated you to pursue this research?
We were interested in how employees experience unfair events on a day-to-day basis and how they “live through” and actively navigate these experiences. We wanted to move away from the dominant perspective in the literature that examines how unfairness impacts employees through the “eyes” and interests of managers and organizations. Instead, we wanted to ground our investigation in employees’ experiences to understand how employees process and respond to these events and how this impacts their relationship with the organization.

Within the fairness literature, it is often assumed that negative emotions are detrimental. However, negative emotions can be functional for employees and hence organizations. One of our study’s most compelling findings is that employees who experience anxiety in reaction to the unfair event are motivated to engage in problem prevention behaviors, which are aimed at “fixing” the situation. Interestingly, employees who engage in these behaviors experienced a “rebound” in their fairness perceptions, such that the drop in perceived fairness due to the unfair event was corrected. By contrast, anger was functional by showing that the unfairness would not be tolerated but did not have the same positive impact on subsequent fairness perceptions. This raises important questions about how employees’ behaviors impact the aftermath of the unfair event and the importance of understanding how employees are experiencing these events to effectively manage these situations.

What advice would you give to new scholars and incoming researchers in this particular field of study?
After decades of research, the fairness literature has become a mature and well-established domain of inquiry, with thousands of studies and dozens of theories. Although this wealth of empirical evidence and theoretical diversity has provided much richness, incoming researchers and doctoral students can find it a bit intimidating to dive into. Further, some scholars have also questioned whether the maturity of this literature will lead to stagnation. However, there are many opportunities to make significant, novel, and important discoveries in this domain by taking different and novel perspectives.

One way to continue to stimulate this literature is to identify and question its underlying assumptions. For example, in our research, we grounded our investigation in the experiences of employees which challenges the dominant perspective in the field. This approach created a number of insights regarding how employees actively navigate unfair events, including how employees can impact their own fairness perceptions through their emotional and behavioral responses as well as the functional nature of negative emotions.

We would encourage new scholars and incoming researchers to challenge assumptions in the literature and also consider how applying theories from other domains and perspectives to fairness can enhance our insights. Doing so will create exciting new opportunities to expand our understanding and ability to manage this important phenomenon. Given the pervasiveness and impact of unfairness, it is critical to provide employees and organizations with evidence-based practices that can help prevent these experiences, where possible, and effectively navigate unfairness when it does occur.

1) Please share an overview of your article with our readers. The article titled, “Reverse Mentoring: A Social Exchange Tool for Keeping the Boomers Engaged and Millennial’s Committed” takes a positive perspective whereby the HRD professionals are encouraged to capitalize on the multi-generational workforce that they are gifted with instead of whining about the challenges that it poses. The article proposes reverse mentoring as a social exchange tool which is aimed at leveraging the expertise of both generations including the boomers and millennials, by being perceptive of their different needs, value systems, and work demands. Reverse Mentoring, which is a fairly new tentacle of mentoring is an inverted type of mentoring relationship, wherein junior employees are paired with senior, seasoned, and more experienced staff. Our article offers social exchange and age identification theory as the basic theoretical underpinnings that support the framework of reverse mentoring as a two way street. The mentoring relationship thrives on the mutual exchange between two generations—senior members of an organization will acquire new learnings in the areas of technology—mobile computing, social media, cloud technology, etc.—and work-life diversity, work-life balance, latest professional trends, changing consumer preferences, and glean a more global perspective on the concepts of openness and diversity. The younger workforce will find in it an opportunity to hone their leadership skills and garner insights on organizational structure. This would eventually result in increased employee commitment and engagement for the millennials and the boomers.

2) How did you reach your interest in this topic? Being instructors at top-notch research universities, we were fortunate to interact with students of high caliber. While facilitating our courses, both of us encountered those AHA moments where our students were instrumental in helping us learn more advanced presentation skills including Prezi, Google HangOut, Google Talk, and the list could just go on. While we were fascinated with our exposure to these new tools, we were equally amazed to witness that there is so much more that these young kids can offer us with respect to new technology and their changing preferences of how they need to be taught to make it most effective for them. This led us to believe that if this relationship is formalized at a much higher level, typically in an organization setting – it can actually reap lot of benefits. Our curiosity led us to dig deeper into this new found intervention of reverse mentoring. What surprised us was the lack of literature in the area when we started researching it in 2011. While a few organizations are trying this intervention, academics have been still slow to jump into this bandwagon. Given the area was still very under researched, we found this an excellent opportunity to pursue.

3) How does your research connect with social responsibility? In 2015, the world witnessed a major demographic shift when the millennials became the largest share of the workforce. Based on the current trend, it is projected that in 2020 millennials will become half of the global workforce. With as many as 4 and in some cases 5 generations working side by side in the workplace, organizational leaders are confronted as never before with a growing generational gap, shifting expectations, as well as the constant need to stay on the cutting ‘digital’ edge. As more and more senior executives are turning to their younger colleagues for insight and guidance, traditional mentoring is gradually shifting into reverse or reciprocal mentoring turning millennials into the must-have mentors for senior leaders who want to stay ahead of the curve. Additionally, the impending retirement of the boomers is resulting in a leadership gap and possible brain drain shortage. In view of this impending labor shortage resulting from the exodus of boomers, employers must find ways to keep these workers engaged post standard retirement ages. We proffer reverse mentoring as a socially responsible intervention which would keep the boomers engaged and the millennials committed.

4) How might a future scholar implement aspects of your research in their work? The extant literature is limited in its scope when it comes to the outcomes of the reverse mentoring relationship as it is a fairly new intervention. We would encourage future scholars to find organizations that have successfully implemented reverse mentoring. As the workforce continues to age and younger generations keep on joining the workforce, we would encourage future scholars to empirically test the propositions offered in this article about the work outcomes of a multigenerational workforce.

Dr. Chaudhuri is currently a lecturer at the University of Minnesota, where she also earned her Ph.D. in human resource development. Her research interests are related to different aspects of human resource development practices and its impact on organizational outcomes including organizational commitment and employee engagement. Dr. Chaudhuri has conducted and published research studies on training outsourcing, work-life balance, cross-cultural leadership, and mentoring. Her co-authored research on ‘Reverse Mentoring’ has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, Canadian Broadcasting, Financial Times, and one of the leading world news channels.

Dr. Ghosh is currently an associate professor at Drexel University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Louisville, and her MBA at the Somaiya Institute of Studies and Research in Mumbai. Dr. Ghosh’s focused research interests include mentoring and leader development, workplace incivility, and workplace learning and development. She has over twenty article publications in journals such as Advances in Developing Human Resources, the Journal of Management Development, and Career Development International.

A sabbatical in 1996 that focused on critical thinking led me to discover the Philosophy of Education Society and the idea of an ethic of care. The more I explored the ethic of care literature, the more it resonated with me and gave me a vocabulary and a philosophical frame for describing and discussing my fundamental processes of facilitating the deep learning of my students. That journey of exploration continues to the present even though I retired from the university in 2009.

In 2003, a student who appeared to be struggling in my MBA capstone strategy course sent me an email asking me not to “give up on her” as she had some learning challenges that held her back from actively contributing to the case discussions. But she also complimented me on the caring and skillful ways in which I focused on my students’ learning development, provided extensive developmental feedback, and continually tried to get my students involved in the discussions. That email triggered a set of questions in my mind that led to the 2008 JME article, “Please Don’t Give Up on Me: When Faculty Fail to Care.” As I understand it, that was the first full length article in JME to address an ethic of care.

As my journey into an ethic of care continued, I did research on the extent to which business ethics textbooks and journals addressed the issue of an ethic of care as an alternative ethical framework to the traditional ethical frameworks of virtue, deontological, utilitarian, and justice ethics. That research revealed an almost total absence of a consideration of an ethic care in business ethics textbooks and only a few articles on an ethic of care in the primary business ethics journals. I also became aware of the significant differences in the ontological/metaphysical assumptions made by the rationalistic and abstract universalistic individualism of traditional ethical frameworks and the relational, concrete, uniqueness of each situation that characterizes an ethic of care and its central focus on the well-being of the parties to the relationship and the relationship itself.

Chory & Offstein’s 2017 JME article (41-1), “Your Professor Will Know You as a Person: Evaluating and Rethinking the Relational Boundaries between Faculty and Students,” prompted me to write, “Getting to Know Your Students and an Educational Ethic of Care.” That article reflects my current exploration of the congruence among an ethic of care, Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy and process ethics, and a process perspective on teaching and learning (see Whitehead, 1929, and Oliver & Gersham, 1989, cited in the article). I now see an ethic of care as a way of being in the world, not just as an alternative ethical framework. But in the educational domain, the most important scholarly work I have read over the last year is: Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2017). Time and the Rhythms of Emancipatory Education: Rethinking the Temporal Complexity of Self and Society. New York: Routledge.Enjoy the reading.

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Career-related rejection is inevitable, since everyone faces this reality at some point in in his or her life. Your idea for approaching project management could be rejected, you could be passed up on a desired promotion, or you could simply not be offered that dream job you’ve wanted since high school.

I initially had the idea for this research from an essay I published in the Academy of Management Learning and Education journal. A couple of its reviewers mentioned that there was no research showing that academic researchers are negatively affected by rejection sensitivity, and their comments intrigued me. So I decided I would conduct the first research attempting to answer the question.

My hope in writing the essay and in this study is to stimulate university research administrators and to “normalize” rejections and consider its effects on faculty affect and performance. In my experience, it’s the “elephant in the room” that everyone wrestles with but few talk about.

[The following post is re-blogged from SAGE Connection. Please click here to view the original article.]

In most companies, performance appraisals (PA) are a common practice used to evaluate overall employee performance while monitoring and fostering the success of both the employee and the company as a whole. This month’s installment of Case in Point, a blog series drawn from SAGE Business Cases and containing insights from thought leaders in business and management, explores a case study written by Dr. David Kimball that follows one human resource director’s journey to construct a valid PA and performance management system (PMS). The following is an interview with Dr. Kimball as he explains the benefits of teaching performance review systems to students in a classroom setting:

The case you wrote describes the implementation of a performance appraisal system at a company that had never had one in place before. In your opinion, what are the top three takeaways from this case for those learning about implementing a performance review system for the first time?

The top takeaway is to consider performance appraisals from the ground up. The student is able to think of the true goals of the PA. What does the company really want to accomplish with the implementation of a PA process?

The second takeaway is for the student to consider what an employee can learn from the PA process. What areas of a job are reviewed in the performance review? In the case, students can assess the areas of work that are the human resource director’s strengths. Where are her weaknesses?

The third takeaway is for students to design and complete a PA Form. Students can either use the form in the case or practice designing their own form. Students can also complete the form for this particular director’s performance.

What kind of information would you expect students to bring to this case study in order to accomplish the assignment?

Most students have not been in a management position where they administer a PA. So, the case allows the student to experience what this individual has to accomplish by creating and administering a performance appraisal system. The student in class is able to role play being the human resource director in a performance appraisal situation.

How are problem-based case studies particularly helpful in teaching real-world management issues in the classroom?

Student engagement in class increases dramatically during case discussions. This case is intentionally short to allow students to read the case in class, discuss it within teams during class, and present their findings in class. Students like to participate in Skill-Building cases that allow them to develop their own skills as managers.